Renee Patrick is a triple-crown through-hiker with over 20 years of experience planning, hiking, and improving long-distance trails. She is an environmentalist and passionate outdoor enthusiast who believes that long-distance hiking can deepen our relationship with the landscapes and environmental issues that desperately need more advocates.

Intentional Hiking, one of Renee’s current projects, affirms the intimacy that hikers develop over hours, days, weeks, or months on foot in a place, and channels that intimacy toward advocacy and care. It’s an awesome project, and if you spend time hiking, you should definitely check it out. You can also follow Renee’s hiking journeys at sherahikes.com, or on instagram @wearehikertrash.

Renee walks us into this episode with a case study of Intentional Hiking from her own life, sharing examples of how she immerses herself into her journeys with the intention of growing deeper connections with the place she’s hiking through: studying its histories; its people; its needs, conservation priorities, and resource conflicts; and then feeling into the ways that a particular place nourishes, holds, and shapes those who move through it. 

Consider this first part of the episode a mini practicum, suggesting ways that any of us might deepen our commitments to the lands and waters we walk among.

I hope you enjoy this episode with Renee "She-Ra" Patrick! For more embodied explorations, go to kinwardmoves.substack.com, and follow us on Instagram @kinward_moves

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